Miata’s Birthday Portrait

 

Portrait of my Miata on her 30th birthday, Sept. 20, 2026, by David Hingtgen

Initially the Miata's "eyes" were closed (as they usually are when
the lights are off), but David suggested that opening the eyes would
give the portrait more sparkle and character. He was so right!

On Sept. 20, 1996, I drove a brand new, bright red Miata home for the first time. Partly sunny, the day wasn’t exactly warm, but of course I took the top down. Without a destination, Greg and I drove around all afternoon, and it was the beginning of beautiful friendship. (See my post from the Miata’s 20th birthday in 2016, when I waxed nostalgic about my history with convertibles.)

To commemorate her 30^th birthday last Sunday, I commissioned urban sketcher and car artist extraordinaire David Hingtgen to make a portrait of my beloved.

The Miata's portrait just completed by David

It’s not often that one gets to sit for a commissioned portrait, so I decided that the Miata deserved a morning at the spa. A couple of days before the portrait, Ian of Dreamy’s Detailing Service came over to give the Miata a full detailing, inside and out, for the first time ever. Believe me, the old gal has never been this clean and pretty since that first day I drove her home.

9/19/26 Ian of Dreamy's Detailing gives the Miata the full spa treatment in my driveway. (photo reference)

To prep for the interior cleaning, I took every item out of the trunk, glove box, behind and (inadvertently) under the seats. It’s not a bad idea to completely clean out a car every couple of decades. In addition to several ferry schedules, road trip brochures and paper maps from the turn of the 21^st century, I found my 1995 edition of The Thomas Guide (which I’m sure I hadn’t opened since I got my first Garmin navigational device in the ‘00s).

Long-lost waterbrush cap

Bonus: A waterbrush cap turned up! I remember dropping it under the seat years ago when I used to sketch all winter in my mobile studio, but I couldn’t reach it. Of course, the waterbrush became useless without a cap, so I must have tossed it. I’m saving this cap for the next time I lose one.

Happy 30th birthday, Miata! You’ve been a fun, reliable, low-maintenance friend all these years, and I hope we still have many more together.

One of many relics from the past three decades that were buried and long forgotten in my car.

That Ambivalent State (Plus My 15th Year)

 

9/17/26 Green Lake

When I can see and sketch color at every turn, I know it’s full-on leaf-peeping season. We’re not there yet. Although some Japanese maples are way ahead of the game (as they usually are), most trees are in that ambivalent state: The lush greens of summer have faded, replaced by hints of golden yellow. The south-facing leaves of other trees are barely blushing red-orange, and I have to restrain myself from going in hard with the bright colors I want to see.

I’m not impatient, though. These neither-here-nor-there hues are just as lovely to see and try to capture, especially during this amazingly beautiful September we’ve been having.

By the way, today is the 15^th anniversary of the day I began drawing. That’s a significant milestone, and I intended to write something profound, insightful or at least witty to commemorate the day. But drawing has been an integral part of my life for so long now that it would be like commemorating the 15^th year since I started drinking water or breathing air. No fanfare; I’ll just go on sketching.

Edited 9/21/26 8:26 a.m. OK, maybe just a bit of fanfare 😉. I dug up this sketch from Day 1, Sept. 21, 2011, for social media, so I'll put it here, too.

9/21/11

Scouting Mission at Centennial Park

 

9/18/26 Cafe Hagen at Centennial Park (quiche not shown to scale)

I’d been trying to get to Seattle’s newly redeveloped Centennial Park all summer. My goal was to eventually lead a USk outing there, but this waterfront park on Elliott Bay had several challenges. People who had been there said it was wide open with very little shade anywhere. With new, attractive bike and walking paths connecting the entire waterfront from Queen Anne to downtown, arriving by bike was ideal, but what about the rest of us? Although free parking was available, word had gotten out, and now the lots were full most of the time. For me, taking public transportation required a time-consuming route that included light rail, multiple buses and walking.

Now that the new Café Hagen was open at the north end of the park, I got a new idea: I put the café as my destination in Google Maps, and suddenly the bus leg of my route was shorter, cutting transit time significantly. Summer was nearly over, but I finally figured out how to get there!

Since this visit was mostly a scouting mission, I began with lunch at Café Hagen (a delicious quiche; much better than the nearly inedible toast I had recently at a different Café Hagen) while sketching the enormous grain terminal right in front of me (top of post). Then I walked south, stopping occasionally to sketch along the way (below), until I reached the Olympic Sculpture Park a little more than a mile from Hagen. I saw several more potential sketches as I walked, but I saved them for future visits.

By no coincidence, USk Seattle was near the end of their outing there (which I decided to skip because I’d just sketched at the Sculpture Park in May). I had just enough time for one quick sketch of a sculpture so that I could join the group for the throwdown.

Now that I know how to get to Centennial Park, I can lead an outing there and offer suggestions for public transit. With no shelter or shade except at the café, which has plenty of covered outdoor seating, the cooler, cloudier part of the year may be the best time to be there anyway. I’ll see if I can squeeze in an outing after all before the wet part of fall gets under way.

Myrtle Edwards Park, which is now connected to Centennial Park

Indian blanket flowers, which cover a large area
of the newly planted pollinator meadow

Sketchwaiting Stories

 

7/15/26 Social Security office

6/11/26 medical waiting room

The sketches I make while waiting for someone or something to happen are usually just ways to “kill time” (I’ve always thought that was an odd expression: Why would we want to kill the only resource we truly have in life?). Yet when I look back at them, I realize that almost all vividly remind me of the circumstances in which they were made, even if the subjects are “nothing” (which almost always defines a sketchwaiting sketch), and even if I haven’t written any notes. Or maybe I should say that the sketches evoke the feelings associated with the circumstances.

5/17/26 waterfront

8/6/26 Green Lake PCC

For example, although I didn’t note the temperature, I know that Aug. 6 (above) was a hot day. I didn’t want to turn on the oven to cook, so I went to PCC to get a pizza. I could tell that people were using the café area simply to enjoy the AC.

7/15/26 Social Security office

9/11/26 Federal Way light rail station

The yellow sketch on June 11 (top of post) was made in the waiting room of Greg’s orthopedist, who had examined a broken arm after a fall. He seemed to be declining in other ways, but the fracture was healing well, which gave me hope.

A month later on July 15, I was in the Social Security office with our marriage license, applying for widow’s benefits.

Every sketch tells a story, large and small.

9/14/26 Green Lake

9/16/26 South Lake Union

Highly Flammable

 

9/16/26

Remember the chair I so proudly assembled? The past several months, it had developed a bad squeak. Every time I leaned back or moved, it made increasingly loud noises of the type that drive me crazy. Fortunately, I had saved the tiny L-shaped screwdriver that came with it. I tried tightening all the screws, but that didn’t help. Maybe WD-40?

Googling gave me the answer: Silicone spray. I came home from the hardware store with a can of one of the most toxic, hazardous products I’d ever brought into the house. Highly flammable! Do not smoke while using! Avoid inhaling or contact with skin! Use only in well-ventilated area! Ingestion may cause death! So many dire warnings!

It took me a while to mentally and physically prep for the dangerous operation. The screws had to be loosened so that the threads could be lubed with the silicone. I did that, then put on a pair of disposable gloves, spread newspaper on the floor near the open front door, and had a rag handy for possible drips (as advised by the instructions). Finally ready, I went to open the can – and the cap wouldn’t come off. Unscrewing didn’t work, and the cap was slightly tapered, so getting a grip on it to pull up was impossible.

Fine. I walked to the hardware store again. The young man who helped me gave the cap a slight push sideways, and it popped right off. Kind and cheerful, he never made me feel stupid, but I did anyway.

I walked home in tears, partly because I felt like an idiot. Mostly, though, it was just one more of a million things I took for granted. If I had complained about the squeaky chair, Greg would have said, “Hold on, I got this,” and dashed downstairs for the appropriate tool and toxic substance. Ten minutes later: “There you go. All fixed.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

Thanks, sweetie. Then, now, and every time in the future that it happens again: Another way to miss you.

Another Yellow Tree

9/15/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Although I wasn’t able to ID it, this yellow tree is different from the Frisia black locusts I sketched last week. It has the same coloration: Lime green leaves most of the year that turn bright lemon yellow in September.

Color note: I made a lot of fuss last week about looking for the right yellow/blue mix to get as close as possible to Caran d’Ache’s Dark Phthalocyanine Green (719). As soon as I got out on location, though, I sort of forgot the plan and instead carried on in my usual manner: Applied the light and medium values of greens for the tree’s foliage (and bright yellow for the sunlit part), then applied Night Blue (149) to the shaded side of the tree. And guess what? Even though I didn’t use the assigned yellow to mix with it, Night Blue did its job beautifully anyway: It mixed with and darkened the various greens I had applied first, and the shaded side looks fairly close to Dark Phthalocyanine Green.

Lesson learned: None. I might learn to stop overthinking colors if it weren’t so much geeky fun!

Technical note: See those leaves in the foreground tree? I dabbed the waterbrush directly onto the blunt back end of the Night Blue crayon (which faces up in my bag’s crayon case) to paint those on. I really like how Neocolor II crayons can be used just like watercolor pans this way – and appear just like paint, too. 

Thornton Creek Media Tests

 

9/12/26 Thornton Creek Channel (non-soluble colored pencils)

It’s mid-September, and that can mean only one thing: I’m gearing up for both InkTober and Pencilvember! For the past few years, I’ve been devoting each challenge month to a specific subject theme, such as ears or pets, with all drawings done from photo references. This year, I thought I’d go back to my roots of trying to draw as much as possible from life and without a theme. The challenge would be to stick to one medium that I rarely use for any length of time. It’s an effective way to get past any resistance and to practice a medium that doesn’t come easily. (Years ago, using ballpoint pens exclusively during InkTober got me to really enjoy and appreciate the medium.)

 

Derwent Drawing and a couple of Prismacolors

Without making commitments yet, I recently took a couple of media out with me to Thornton Creek Channel to see how they might do. Derwent Drawing pencils (or dry colored pencils in general) are a definite contender for Pencilvember. For a month now, I’ve been anticipating that fall might be a great time to give these pencils a solid try on location. As mentioned in that previous post, my plan would be to stay small with my sketches so that they would remain relatively fast. I’ve been so dependent on water to do the heavy lifting of building strong values with water-soluble pencils or crayons that using non-soluble pencils would be time-consuming. Or would it? Maybe this is a good time to see what shortcuts or techniques I can develop to make this medium more on-location friendly.

The sketch above, about two-thirds of an A5-ish page in my Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook, probably took twice as long as a similar size sketch using water-soluble materials. I’ll have to go even smaller for the same efficiency.

Staedtler Pigment Arts Brush Pens

I’m less certain about my candidate InkTober. For this trial run, I took a small set of Staedtler Pigment Arts Brush Pens, which I learned about from Roz Stendahl several months ago. Containing waterproof, pigment-based ink, they are similar to Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush pens, which I’ve been using for many years. The Staedtler pens are significantly cheaper than Faber-Castell, however. I go through Pitt pens fairly rapidly, especially Cold Gray III, which has long been a favorite for shading. The last time I needed to reorder Pitts, I thought I’d give Staedtler a try.

6 of the 12 colors in the "Nature" set

Although the lower price is appealing, one major disadvantage of the Staedtlers is that they aren’t available open stock. I chose the set of 12 “Nature” colors, which has a decent selection for landscape and urban sketching. I sort of enjoy the challenge of a limited, pre-selected palette that I didn’t even choose myself. But for 31 days during the height of fall color? I might need to supplement with Pitt brush pens, which I own in a much wider color range.

Perhaps the greater hurdle with brush markers is that I have never cared for the marker-ish look. My engineer brother once described the violin as analog (the ability to modulate from one note to the next) while the piano is digital (on or off). Along the same lines, colored pencils (or almost any dry media) are analog, while markers are digital. If I compare the two sketches here of the same scene, I certainly prefer the modulated look of colored pencils. (I didn’t like my recent attempts at Jimi Hendrix Park at all.) Maybe I just haven’t learned to use markers in a way that appeals to me.

Who knows – maybe I’ll declare December mixed-media month and use colored pencils and markers together! Past attempts usually haven’t been satisfying; brush markers have a way of taking over the party, no matter who else is in the room. But if art challenges like InkTober and Pencilvember aren’t for learning, why take part? I’m game.

This is the thumbnail I made to test the values and composition before
making the color sketches. The best part of it is the comment I overheard.